I don't know what to tell you: I just noticed significantly more people around and in the ballpark the summer of 1997. I have no idea why. I'm not denying when it really took off, but more people were starting to show up the year before. And yeah, it's not around 40,000, but when you're getting 14-17,000 instead of 10-12,000 it shows thing s are starting to change, for whatever reason.